Suites Song
Poetry by Federico García Lorca
Drawings and calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
San Francisco, 2010
Unique book
7.75 x 10 inches, 28 pages

This book was inspired by my work with Manuel Neri and the poetry of Lorca. Most of the work that I had done with the collaboration had involved, for lack of better words, Lorca's more despairing poetry. I wanted to do something fairly straightforward with a few of his lighter, more playful poems. I chose three poems and balanced them against simple watercolor figure drawings. With the drawings I wanted to capture the directness and simplicity of form seen in Manuel Neri's drawings.

Suites Song is available from Vamp and Tramp Booksellers

Out of The Air 
Poetry by David Annwn 
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
11.5 x 15.75 inches, 36 pages
This book records an experimental research with the British poet David Annwn. “Reactive, correlative or reciprocal successive ekphrasis” is the term that he proposes as a description of the work. It is a process by which a writer creates one text in relation to an image, the visual artist then creates a new image in relation to that text, and the writer then makes another text in relation to the second image, and so on, in a chain or path of responses. 

The sequence in this book was initiated by a non-verbal calligraphic image (page 2 in the book) by Ingmire. Annwn made a spontaneous poetic response that has been written by Ingmire on the facing page 1. The back and forth process yielded seven poems by Annwn that are coupled with Ingmire’s calligraphic responses. The book also includes a number of alternative images and sketches. Additional information about collaborations between Ingmire and Annwn can be found at :
http://lyndondavies.co.uk/w/1768/david-annwn-flying-through-poetry-collaborations-with/

At the completion of the project, John Cowey, a musician/composer friend of David's was inspired to create this composition.

Out of the Air is available at Vamp and Tramp Booksellers

Diva Fall Jive: Mr. Verb Visits the Tayu
Poetry by Christine Kennedy
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
Book structure by Kyoko Matsunaga
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
4.125 x 10.25 inches, 50 pages

This project was originally a collaboration with Christine Kennedy, but ultimately evolved to include book artist, Kyoko Matsunaga, and composer/musician, Hide Takemoto.  Christine created her poem as a response to an abstract calligraphic image that I had made while listening to music.  She used a delightfully unique  path to get to her poem. Working with the software program Abby Fine Reader, she scanned my "music" sheet  in all four directions with the command to read it in English. This produced several pages of typographic symbols and fragments of words. Those sheets were run through Microsoft Word spell check and resulted in a collection of words, which then became the basis for her poem.

The poem, with its Japanese associations, led to my invitations  to the other two artists. Kyoko created the fan-like structure which she has given the name "water-wheel binding.  It can take many forms and  is as much a sculpture as it is a book.  Images of the book and the poem were then sent to Hide Takemoto, who lives in London. He responded with a composition  titled "Honey Rain." 

The book is currently available from Vamp and Tramp Booksellers.

White Persimmon
Poetry by Alan Halsey 
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
8.75 x 10.25 inches, 8 pages
White Persimmon is the title of a poem by Alan Halsey. His poem can be viewed both as a “form” poem and a performance piece. In describing the performance Halsey writes: “Three groups of people speak or sing in whispers, as if telling a secret (they’ve seen something rare & wonderful). The ‘choirs’ perform according to a script. They repeat their words slowly & with pauses, each voice setting its own rhythm (unison is definitely not required), freely improvising pitch etc. The work builds until all the voices are heard. Once this is established the voices gradually subside into silence.” It was this image of the sound building and subsiding that inspired the work.